Psycho Remake and Old Conversations
Twenty-six years ago, (1998), I was working on the re-make of Psycho, and using the money I was making to finish my first feature, Birddog.
Good Will Hunting paid for most of the production, the Psycho remake paid to finish it up.
It was thirty-six years ago, (1988), I was in LA working on this horrible low-budget film, Mercenary Fighters. It was a Peter Fonda, James Mitchum classic shot somewhere in South Africa I believe. They would never tell us exactly where it was shot, but not a lot of money was spent which made it odd that they were using a union sound crew to finish up the film. Ah, the wonders of film financing back in the eighties.
I was working with a bunch of “old” guys, but these guys had amazing backgrounds. They had all come from the studio system, and had worked on some true classic films. Now they were just looking for work on anything as the studio system had changed.
I thought I was a pretty good sound editor but these dudes took me to school, in a nice way. When that show was over I knew so much more about editing and designing sound then I thought possible, and I had already cut a couple feature films by this time.
This is actually a 16mm Moviola Not a 35mm
Yes, we were still using upright 35mm Moviolas and cutting everything on 35mm magnetic film. Back then the producers would give us what was called a “black and white dupe”, which was a direct 35mm copy of the work print that the editor was cutting. The big difference was it was black and white because it was cheaper to make.
Whenever they would make significant changes they would just make more black and white prints for us to use. The advantage of these copies was that it was all one piece of film, around ten minutes in length, which was the maximum length you could really edit on with the upright moviolas. And there were no physical edits on these copies so they would run smoothly through our moviolas. Most of the time anyway, as moviolas were notorious for tearing up the film whenever you ran across an edit. But that’s another story for another time.
Our editing rooms were down in Venice, California so every day we would walk along the boardwalk to someplace nice and eat outside. These guys knew the best places to go.
One day at lunch we’re sitting at a restaurant in the Marina when one of the guys mentions that a guy at another table looks familiar. The other guys look and they’re all sure they know him and are wondering if he’s in the business? Is he another sound editor? One guy is pretty convinced that he was.
I had my back to the guy and finally I turn around and look. “Hey guys, that guy plays the Colonel in the movie. We’ve all been staring at him for three weeks.”
It's always different seeing someone in real life color when you've been staring at them for weeks in black and white.
Lunch time was when I used to get these guys to tell me stories from the old days and films they had worked on.
One guy had started in television working on shows like, The FBI, Mod Squad, The Streets of San Francisco, and films like, Popeye, The Natural, Hoosiers, and Good Morning, Vietnam. Word was one of the first scenes he ever edited sound on was the chariot race in Ben Hur. He retired in 1994.
Another editor had worked on, Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels, Commando, Big Trouble In Little China, Tin Men, among others. He retired in 1995.
I shared a cutting room with Dick Oswald, among the films he worked on was, LeMans, Bound For Glory, The Last Waltz, Close Encounters of The Third Kind and had just finished up on Lethal Weapon. Dick had started his career at Universal and had cut sound on both Psycho and The Birds.
I asked these guys a ton of questions and their answers and stories were great. I felt like I was a film school kid again.
Of course I probably had more questions for Dick than anyone. He was a real gentleman. I believe the last show he worked on was, The Shawshank Redemption, in 1994.
So ten years later when Gus asks me if I want to do the sound on the re-make of Psycho, I had to say yes. I felt like I already knew so much about the original process that I couldn’t fathom anyone else doing it. And this time around we didn’t use upright Moviolas.
I took the things Dick told me and integrated what I could into the updated version.
The big thing and one of my first questions was, “What was the stabbing sound they used in the shower scene?”
“It was a knife going into a casaba melon.”
“Why a casaba melon?”
“It just sounded right.”
So when we recorded new sound effects I brought in a whole selection of melons, fruits, vegetables, meat, almost anything I could imagine stabbing. I had knives, hatchets, clubs, baseball bats, you name it. I really wanted to find the right sounds and I had a decent budget to play with.
We spent a few hours stabbing and smashing things and making a real mess. So what was the final sound we used in the shower scene? A knife going into a casaba melon. Dick was correct, it just sounded right.
I don’t believe any of those guys are still around. I have always appreciated the time they took to show me a lot of their little tricks and the things they thought were important when it came to film sound. I was truly lucky.
Whenever you get the chance to sit down and talk to someone in your industry who’s been around and seen it all, DO IT! You’ll never regret the time taken and most of the “old” people I’ve ever worked with were happy to talk to me. They loved the fact that someone was interested in their work.
It’s funny, I’m probably the same age now as those “old” guys were when I worked them. Hopefully I have finally acquired a little wisdom that I can pass on.
Thanks for reading. Have a great week.
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